Planning for Change

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-118
Author(s):  
David Mitchell ◽  
Sarah E. Larson ◽  
Claudia Colantonio ◽  
Christina Nguyen

Many governments have adopted strategic plans to improve outcomes, but these efforts often fail because they do not take implementation into consideration as they plan. Past research indicates that the situational context of a strategic initiative influences implementation success. This study explores how context influences the relationship between implementation best practices and success by examining 155 strategic initiatives from 36 U.S. municipalities through a series of multiple regression analyses. The evidence indicates that context does alter the success rate of implementation best practices and should be taken into consideration during strategic planning in order to improve government effectiveness.

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S521-S521
Author(s):  
Mary K Huffman ◽  
Steve Amireault

Abstract According to the ecological model, physical activity (PA) results from interactions between personal (e.g., intentions), social (e.g., autonomy support), and environmental factors (e.g., walkability, rurality). However, past research has commonly used dichotomous measures of rurality (i.e., rural versus urban), which has limited our understanding of the relationship between rurality and other PA correlates. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the associations between rurality and known correlates of PA among older adults. Ninety-one older adults aged ≥ 60 years, without severe cognitive impairment, completed a questionnaire assessing PA intentions (α = 0.89), autonomy support for PA (α = 0.91), and walkability (α = 0.76). The Index of Relative Rurality, a continuous, multidimensional measure of rurality, was used to evaluate the degree of rurality based on residential zip-code. Regression analyses revealed that the rurality-autonomy support association followed an inverted-U shape function (p = 0.01), whereas rurality was negatively associated with walkability (p = 0.02). Rurality was not associated with PA intentions; however, autonomy support was positively associated with PA intentions (p = 0.01). The use of non-dichotomous measures of rurality appears essential in our understanding of its association with other PA correlates. Failure to use such measures may result in incomplete portrayals of relationships.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (7) ◽  
pp. 2281-2292
Author(s):  
Ying Zhao ◽  
Xinchun Wu ◽  
Hongjun Chen ◽  
Peng Sun ◽  
Ruibo Xie ◽  
...  

Purpose This exploratory study aimed to investigate the potential impact of sentence-level comprehension and sentence-level fluency on passage comprehension of deaf students in elementary school. Method A total of 159 deaf students, 65 students ( M age = 13.46 years) in Grades 3 and 4 and 94 students ( M age = 14.95 years) in Grades 5 and 6, were assessed for nonverbal intelligence, vocabulary knowledge, sentence-level comprehension, sentence-level fluency, and passage comprehension. Group differences were examined using t tests, whereas the predictive and mediating mechanisms were examined using regression modeling. Results The regression analyses showed that the effect of sentence-level comprehension on passage comprehension was not significant, whereas sentence-level fluency was an independent predictor in Grades 3–4. Sentence-level comprehension and fluency contributed significant variance to passage comprehension in Grades 5–6. Sentence-level fluency fully mediated the influence of sentence-level comprehension on passage comprehension in Grades 3–4, playing a partial mediating role in Grades 5–6. Conclusions The relative contributions of sentence-level comprehension and fluency to deaf students' passage comprehension varied, and sentence-level fluency mediated the relationship between sentence-level comprehension and passage comprehension.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja Wertag ◽  
Denis Bratko

Abstract. Prosocial behavior is intended to benefit others rather than oneself and is positively linked to personality traits such as Agreeableness and Honesty-Humility, and usually negatively to the Dark Triad traits (i.e., Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy). However, a significant proportion of the research in this area is conducted solely on self-report measures of prosocial behavior. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between prosociality and the basic (i.e., HEXACO) and dark personality traits, comparing their contribution in predicting both self-reported prosociality and prosocial behavior. Results of the hierarchical regression analyses showed that the Dark Triad traits explain prosociality and prosocial behavior above and beyond the HEXACO traits, emphasizing the importance of the Dark Triad in the personality space.


Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-59
Author(s):  
Priyanka ◽  
Ipshita Bansal

As per the current condition of environment degradation, most of the higher education institutions are working on making the campus green and implementing sustainability in curriculum as well as working of institution. The current study focuses on green management of campuses of private universities of Haryana on operational aspect of institution and determine the best practices that were adopted and should be adopted in order to implement sustainability processes. Green management means the integration of principle of Management and environment management that form the relationship between environment and management. The data is collected from, private universities of Haryana through studying the documents, website and interview of competent authority of universities. Based on the research, concept of green campus has been purposed which involve the smart sharing of resources, development of green buildings and reducing the use of transportation and carbon footprints. In addition, the study also conclude that sustainability and green management should be made the integral part of the attitude of students, scholars and staff members for making the campus green. So, the best practices should be adopted across various area of institution for making the environment sustainable green campus and forming the positive attitude of students and staff members towards sustainability.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amir Karami ◽  
Brandon Bookstaver ◽  
Melissa Nolan

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted nearly all aspects of life and has posed significant threats to international health and the economy. Given the rapidly unfolding nature of the current pandemic, there is an urgent need to streamline literature synthesis of the growing scientific research to elucidate targeted solutions. While traditional systematic literature review studies provide valuable insights, these studies have restrictions, including analyzing a limited number of papers, having various biases, being time-consuming and labor-intensive, focusing on a few topics, incapable of trend analysis, and lack of data-driven tools. OBJECTIVE This study fills the mentioned restrictions in the literature and practice by analyzing two biomedical concepts, clinical manifestations of disease and therapeutic chemical compounds, with text mining methods in a corpus containing COVID-19 research papers and find associations between the two biomedical concepts. METHODS This research has collected papers representing COVID-19 pre-prints and peer-reviewed research published in 2020. We used frequency analysis to find highly frequent manifestations and therapeutic chemicals, representing the importance of the two biomedical concepts. This study also applied topic modeling to find the relationship between the two biomedical concepts. RESULTS We analyzed 9,298 research papers published through May 5, 2020 and found 3,645 disease-related and 2,434 chemical-related articles. The most frequent clinical manifestations of disease terminology included COVID-19, SARS, cancer, pneumonia, fever, and cough. The most frequent chemical-related terminology included Lopinavir, Ritonavir, Oxygen, Chloroquine, Remdesivir, and water. Topic modeling provided 25 categories showing relationships between our two overarching categories. These categories represent statistically significant associations between multiple aspects of each category, some connections of which were novel and not previously identified by the scientific community. CONCLUSIONS Appreciation of this context is vital due to the lack of a systematic large-scale literature review survey and the importance of fast literature review during the current COVID-19 pandemic for developing treatments. This study is beneficial to researchers for obtaining a macro-level picture of literature, to educators for knowing the scope of literature, to journals for exploring most discussed disease symptoms and pharmaceutical targets, and to policymakers and funding agencies for creating scientific strategic plans regarding COVID-19.


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Hongwu Xiao ◽  
Donghan Wang ◽  
Xiaohan Liu ◽  
Yi Liu

We applied role theory to test a theoretical model that explained how and why an implicit prototype match influences employees' proactive behavior in interpersonal contexts. After analyzing the reliability and validity of the variables, we used correlation and regression analyses to test our hypotheses with 342 participants from enterprises in China. The results show that (a) a stronger implicit prototype match increased employees' proactive behavior, (b) leader–member exchange mediated the relationship between implicit prototype match and proactive behavior, and (c) leader–member liking (employee's liking for leader and vice versa) moderated the relationship between implicit prototype match and leader–member exchange. Our findings provide theoretical support for implicit prototype theory from the implicit match perspective and have managerial implications for organizations seeking to improve employees' proactive behavior.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (14) ◽  
pp. 1696-1716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ida Frugaard Stroem ◽  
Helene Flood Aakvaag ◽  
Tore Wentzel-Larsen

This study investigates the relationship between the characteristics of different types of childhood violence and adult victimization using two waves of data from a community telephone survey (T1) and a follow-up survey, including 505 cases and 506 controls, aged 17-35 years (T2). The logistic regression analyses showed that exposure to childhood abuse, regardless of type, was associated with adult victimization. Exposure to multiple types of abuse, victimization both in childhood and in young adulthood, and recency of abuse increased these odds. Our findings emphasize the importance of assessing multiple forms of violence when studying revictimization. Practitioners working with children and young adults should be attentive to the number of victimization types experienced and recent victimization to prevent further abuse.


Author(s):  
Rev George Handzo ◽  
Rev Brian Hughes

Gomez and her colleagues have presented a helpful study of the relationship of the chaplains in her health system to physicians which highlights several barriers to a well-integrated relationship and thus to more optimal patient care. We have seen these same barriers as we have consulted with health systems nationally and have also identified many best practices that mediate or even eliminate many of these barriers. This commentary describes some of what we have seen as chaplain-generated causes of those barriers and effective strategies that have been employed to overcome them. We also provide some resources for chaplains who wish to institute some of these best practices themselves.


SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824402110030
Author(s):  
Kai Kaspar ◽  
Lisa Anna Marie Fuchs

Stimulated by the uses-and-gratification approach, this study examined the joint relation of several consumer characteristics to news interest. In total, 1,546 German-speaking participants rated their interest in 15 major news categories and several personal characteristics, including gender, age, the Big Five personality traits, self-esteem, as well as general positive and negative affect. Regression analyses examined the amount of interindividual variance in news interest that can be explained by this set of consumer characteristics. Overall, the amount of explained variance differed remarkably across news categories, ranging from 4% for entertainment-related news to 25% for news about technology. The most powerful explaining variables were participants’ gender, age, openness to experiences, and their amount of general positive affect. The results suggest that news interest should be defined and operationalized as a concept with multiple facets covering a huge range of content. Also, the results are important for media producers and journalists with respect to the conflict between increased need gratification of consumers and information filtering via personalized news content.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 619-619
Author(s):  
Yeji Hwang ◽  
Nancy Hodgson

Abstract Anxiety and depression are one of the most distressing symptoms for the family caregivers. Little is known about the relationship between sleep impairments and anxiety/depression in this population and how objective and subjective sleep measures differ in relation to anxiety. This study was designed to examine the relationship between sleep impairments and anxiety/depression in people with dementia, using both subjective and objective sleep measures. Among the 170 study participants, 50% (n=85) reported to have anxiety/depression. In univariate logistic regression analyses on anxiety/depression, adjusting for dementia stage, people with more subjective sleep impairment had higher odds of having anxiety/depression (OR=1.111; 95% CI: 1.020-1.211, p=0.016) and people with poorer subjective sleep quality had higher odds of having anxiety/depression (OR=1.702; 95% CI: 1.046-2.769, p=0.032). Objective sleep measures from actigraphy did not show any significant relationships to anxiety/depression. The results suggest that subjective sleep measures are closely related to anxiety/depression in this population.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document